A Minnesota summer that started with a brazenly violent shooting ends with another one

This summer in Minnesota will now be remembered for two planned acts of violence, one at the beginning and one at the end, that are likely to leave lasting marks on the state’s sense of security and well-being.

The Wednesday morning shooting at Annunciation Church in south Minneapolis left two children dead and 17 people injured, 14 of them children. Police said a single shooter, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was responsible.

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said lives were changed and the community was “deeply traumatized by the senseless attack,” which he called a “deliberate act of violence.”

The Minneapolis shooting came just two months after the assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, at their home in Brooklyn Park. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, were also shot and injured that morning at their Champlin home. The alleged shooter, Vance Boelter, is facing federal and state charges.

The June 14 shootings of the Hortmans and Hoffmans left many Minnesotans worried about the direction of the state’s political culture and have many elected officials rethinking their own personal security.

The Annunciation shooting, in which alleged shooter Robin Westman was apparently standing outside and firing through windows into the church during a start-of-school service, is certain to revive a long-running debate about how society can stem these repeated acts of violence, particularly those targeting children.

The shootings at Annunciation punctuated a particularly violent 18 hours in the city of Minneapolis, in which three people were killed in three separate shootings around the city. Following the church shooting, O’Hara said he didn’t believe the other incidents were connected to what happened at Annunciation.

As of Wednesday, police had responded to far fewer “shots fired” calls than at this time last year, and 75 fewer people had suffered gunshot wounds, according to city data.

Then came Tuesday and Wednesday, which between them saw five people killed by guns in Minneapolis, and scores of others wounded.

“I’m very brokenhearted,” Minneapolis resident Pamela Smith said in response to the Annunciation shooting. “I’m so sick and tired of this. I’m very brokenhearted. Just to know that somebody’s baby was in there, somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother.”

Gov. Tim Walz, who has spoken publicly of the personal toll he felt after the June political shootings, found himself again in the role of the state’s chief consoler.

Children at Annunciation were “met with evil and horror and death” during their school Mass, Walz said on Wednesday afternoon at a news conference.

In the hours ahead of the Annunciation shooting, Minneapolis police officers had been scrambling from the scene of one fatal shooting to another. At about 2 a.m. on Wednesday, officers had gone to the corner of 8th Street and Hennepin Avenue. One man was killed and a second was injured when a gunman opened fire at close range and shot into a group of people on a sidewalk, police said.

The shooter fled the scene.

Another man was taken to HCMC with noncritical injuries, police said.

About six hours earlier, one man in his 20s was fatally shot in the 2700 block of 3rd Avenue S. Police went to the scene at about 8 p.m. Tuesday and found the victim with gunshot wounds.

Officers rendered aid before the man was taken to HCMC, where he died, a statement from Minneapolis police said.

The late-night and early morning shootings came after one person was killed and six others hurt in a shooting around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday near Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in the 2900 block of Clinton Avenue S. O’Hara said Wednesday that two people have been arrested in connection with assisting in the shooting, although the shooter remains at large.

There have been 41 homicides in Minneapolis this year, according to a Minnesota Star Tribune database. That compares with 51 at this time last year.

“The level of gun violence across the city within the last day is deeply unsettling,” O’Hara said Wednesday. He said that before the Annunciation shootings.